242 General Notes. 
GEOLOGY AND PALZONTOLOGY. 
Mimic EARTHQUAKE NEAR AKRON, O.—A district of coun- 
try lying about five miles south of Akron, O., was on the night 
between Thursday, February 9th, and Friday, February 10th, the 
scene of a commotion that well simulated an earthquake on a small 
scale. About nine o’clock in the evening a smart shock disturbed 
the inhabitants and caused much consternation, which was intensi- 
fied when between two and three the following morning a severer 
one, accompanied by a loud noise, as of an explosion, awoke the 
sleepers by shaking the houses and cracking the walls of some of 
them. When daylight came several long clefts in the ground were 
discovered, furnishing evidence of some subterranean disturbance 
during the night. 
Similar phenomena occurred almost in the same spot in 1882 and 
1883. At that time a cleft from two hundred to three hundred feet 
long was formed, which crossed a road, marking its course with a 
furrow, such as that made by a plough. This crack was not more 
than an inch or two in width, but was sounded with a stick to the 
depth of several feet (some say fifteen or twenty). It passed under ~ 
a house, cracking the cellar-wall. The noise accompanying it was 
likened by some of those who heard it toa cannon fired in the 
cellar. The explosion of Friday morning last (February 10) was 
heard by several persons in Akron, at a distance of about five miles. 
The writer visited the spot last summer, at the request of a gen- 
tleman who had leased several farms, with the intention of drilling 
for gas. On making inquiry of one of the oldest residents, he 
learned that an earlier event of the same kind took place about 
twenty-five years ago, but could get no details. 
The phenomena pointed, not to seismic causes, but to subterra- 
nean explosions, presumably of gas. The ground is clay an 
pa moraine matter, probably not less than a hundred feet m 
depth. , 
Kile account differs somewhat in the details: “ After the ex- 
plosion in 1882, then the fissures, some of them nearly half a mile 
long, radiated to the top of a rise of ground. Mr. Thornton dug 4 
hole nine (9) feet deep at the point where the fissures crossed OF 
formed a centre, and at that depth found the cleft in the earth as 
pronounced as it was at the surface.” 
So far as it is possible to determine it, the cause of the prong 
tion is due to the presence of a certain, perhaps a small, amount 0 
natural gas, which, in ordinary circumstances, escapes unnoticed. 
But when the ground is frozen (and all these explosions have pga 
red in the winter) the gas is unable to ooze through the soil 
